North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor Tuesday, defeating Republicans Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive's office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.

Stein, a Harvard-educated lawyer, former state senator and the state's top law enforcement official since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited for re-election. He will be the state's first Jewish governor.

Democrats have held the governor's mansion for all but four years since 1993, although the GOP has held the legislative majority since 2011.

As was the case during Cooper's term, a key task for Stein will likely be to use his veto stamp to block what he sees as far-right policies. During his eight years as governor, Cooper had mixed success on this front.

Otherwise, Stein's campaign platform largely followed Cooper's policy goals, including increasing funding for public schools, promoting clean energy and ending further Republican restrictions on abortion.

Stein's campaign significantly outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state's first black governor.

For months, Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments Robinson had made on abortion, women and other issues LGBTQ+ people They said it made him too extreme to lead a swing state.

Robinson's campaign faltered in September when CNN reported that he had posted explicitly racist and sexual posts on the message board of a pornography website more than a decade ago. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and one person for defamation in October.

In the days following the CNN report, most of his Top campaign staffers have quitmany GOP elected colleagues and candidates – including presidential candidates Donald Trump – distanced themselves from his campaign and the outside money supporting him over the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on advertising in recent weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.

The 58-year-old Stein grew up in Chapel Hill, the son of a prominent civil rights attorney, and attended Dartmouth and Harvard Law School. He ran John Edwards' victorious 1998 U.S. Senate campaign and worked as Cooper's consumer protection chief in the 2000s while Cooper was attorney general.

Stein succeeded Cooper as attorney general, but his victories in the 2016 and 2020 general elections were extremely narrow: fewer than 25,000 votes both times.

As attorney general, he furthered his efforts to protect citizens from polluters, predatory student loans and high electric bills.

Stein praised lawmakers for clearing the backlog of testing thousands of sexual assault kits in police custody, saying it has led to additional DNA matches for unsolved crimes. He also sued TikTok, saying the company designed the app to be addictive and misrepresented the risks it posed to young users.

Stein angered Republicans with his decision to drop the state's defense of a 2013 voter ID law that was repealed and some abortion restrictions.

And while he co-chaired a task force in 2020 that made numerous recommendations to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system, liberal activists complained the following year that his office wasn't doing enough to protect civil rights.